A quicker ride along Interstate 75 in Broward and Miami-Dade counties could come at the expense of endangered wood storks.

A plan to widen a 17-mile stretch of the interstate would destroy 382 acres of foraging habitat for the birds, which have declined in the southeastern United States due to a loss of wetlands in which to catch fish, according to a biological opinion released this week by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The proposal calls for adding one or two lanes, depending on the section, to the existing northbound and southbound lanes from Interstate 595 to just south of State Road 826, in a project by the Florida Department of Transportation, which would be approved and funded by the Federal Highway Administration. The FHA was required by law to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In its opinion, the wildlife service said it disagreed with the FHA that the project was not likely to adversely affect the wood stork. But while it said widening the road would deprive the wood stork of habitat, it said the project would not jeopardize the species’ survival, a finding that would have made it more difficult to the work to take place. The wildlife service said the destruction of wetlands in the I-75 project represents the loss of only .001 percent of the available wetlands and is “not a significant reduction in the geographic distribution of habitat for the species.”

“After reviewing the current status of the wood stork, the environmental baselines for the action areas, the effects of the proposed action, and the cumulative effects, it is the Service’s Biological Opinion the project as proposed, is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the wood stork,” the opinion states.

Wood storks will travel 10 miles or more to find wetlands sufficiently dense with prey for the their odd method of hunting by touch, in which the beak opens and snaps shut in an instant as soon as it touches a fish. The species declined from about 20,000 nesting pairs in the 1930s to a low of 2,500 during a drought in 1978, with loss of wetlands cited by the wildlife service as the major cause. Their number have risen sharply since then, with more than 11,000 nesting pairs counted in the most recent survey.